We Meet Today

Sensitive Content: Mild C-section birth details.

We sit in two waiting room chairs, my husband and I, not knowing what to do or where to look. It is odd. Unnatural. I cradle my enlarged belly and watch the woman in scrubs at the front desk take a phone call. Ethan flips absentmindedly through an automotive magazine and I barely lift my chin in acknowledgment to his murmuring in my direction something about Formula 1. My baby girl wiggles inside me, kicking her legs and stretching her arms, as if she knows something has been set in motion. I place a gentle hand on my stomach, reassuring her we are in this together.

We had arrived early, and after thirty minutes of sitting impatiently and as comfortably as a person can at thirty-nine weeks gestation, a nurse calls my name and leads us from the minimally decorated waiting area to a room through the large oak doors. I can see from the windows the sun is out, the leaves on trees not yet yellow but still green and lush and full. The promise of a new season closer than we think.

Though the hospital windows are thick and sealed shut, I can almost smell the fragrant air, the smell of an almost-changing season and the whisper of the nearby sea bringing me closer to nature than my current surroundings. I long for the breeze to kiss my cheeks instead of stale, recycled air conditioning. I am instructed to remove my clothes and my jewelry, put on the hospital gown, and get comfortable. I am having a baby today. My caesarean section is scheduled for five o’clock p.m. It is currently four-fifteen.

The clock ticks. I wait. Ethan waits. This is not how I imagined my daughter’s entrance into the world. No one tells you how it feels when the nurse calls to schedule your child’s birthday. Her birthday is announced as the next available appointment on the doctor’s calendar. A birthday is meant to be unknown, as much a surprise to your baby as it is to you! But there is an unease from knowing the day you will give birth, like you are playing dress up as god. Who am I to decide a birthday? With childbirth, there comes a sense of urgency. My water broke! I am having contractions! Grab the go-bag! Get the keys and drive! Go! Go! Go!

There are no exclamation points today. We enjoyed a quiet breakfast, showered leisurely, double-checked that our toothbrushes were packed, and walked (or waddled, on my part) to the car, driving to the hospital at a reasonable speed. All odd. So very, very odd.

I am brought back to the present when a nurse arrives to wheel the bed, with me in it, out of the room. It’s time. Time to give birth? Nurses wave to me, congratulate me, smiles wide and joyful as I am rolled to the next stage of this journey. I am a beauty queen on her float traveling down the parade route. I wave to my fans and I try my best to smile back but it feels forced. Here I go to have a baby cut out of me! This all feels less like a parade route and more like the Green Mile.

Why did no one warn me?

I lay on the surgical table, arms outstretched at my sides as if this is an approved crucifixion. I am naked, save for the flimsy hospital gown, a pattern of delicate flowers splattered across my distended belly. Then, the doctor lifts the gown to expose me. I feel vulnerable, bare, unsettled. Did I think I could do this without being splayed naked on a table for all the doctors and nurses to see? The spinal tap has worked. I cannot feel my nakedness, yet I know it is there.

It’s time.

My husband, my sweet husband, closes the space between us. He sits on a hard folding chair and leans in close. Our foreheads touch and for this moment, I am safe. His hands rest on my extended arm and he locks his eyes to mine. His blue eyes and my blue eyes speak to each other, understanding the soul within the other. We are in this together.

The shock of the following moments is nothing short of extraordinary. I am cut through every layer of my being. Nerves severed, skin torn, organs moved aside. I cannot feel pain but I can feel pressure. Force! My hips lift from the surgical table as the doctor removes my intestines. It is jarring and I am panicked. Why did no one warn me?! Tears come down hot and wet but my face is turned to my husband’s so they fall uncomfortably over my eyebrows and nose. We are so close some tears land on his face. The strength of his stare settles me, but I am still scared. I can tell he is, too. And while I am surrounded by a staff of professionals and my partner in this life, I feel alone.

My baby is forcibly removed from my womb, her warm comfort, the only home she’s known. It is unnatural, for her and me, for her first breath of oxygen to come not at the end of the vaginal canal but in the hands of a surgeon. This is not my mother! There is a privacy sheet hanging, cutting me in half on the surgical table. But what prevents me from seeing my entrails on a table also prevents my daughter from seeing me in her first moments. Where is she?

The doctor lifts her above the curtain so Ethan and I can witness our miracle. She is small and bloody and mad. Her screams rip through the room. My instinct tells me to get her, hold her, help her! The staff chuckle at her cries, commenting how she shall grow to be an opera singer with that voice! I am helpless, nothing more than a gutted animal under cold, sterile lights.

Ethan is allowed to walk to the examination table where they are checking my daughter’s eyes and mouth and heartbeat. He takes pictures of her, holds her hand. I am still a sacrificial lamb laying on the altar of surgical medicine. The doctor begins to put back the pieces of my gut and sews me up layer by violated layer.

Finally, finally! My daughter is swaddled and brought to me. I see her and she sees me and we know. We will always be in this together. My arms wrap around her and I rest her cheek to mine. She isn’t crying anymore, she is comforted in the arms of her mother, the person she knows more intimately than anyone in this world. I kiss her nose, one she inherited from her father; I kiss her forehead, the same shape as mine. She opens her eyes, blue as the ocean, and it occurs to me this is the most natural thing in the world.